Detroit Sports Fans Throw Muskrat in Response to Results
DETROIT (Disassociated Press) – June 4, 2007 – Throughout the City of Detroit, and across Southeastern Michigan, from Wyandotte to Hamtramck, Detroit area sports fans hurled muskrats into the streets Sunday, following the Eastern Conference Finals loss by the top seeded Detroit Pistons, and their subsequent elimination from the NBA Playoffs.
“It’s both an expression of mourning, and, at the same time, a tribute,” explained Barth Grimlot, long time fan of Detroit professional sports teams, and teams from the nearby University of Michigan.
The Pistons loss capped a year of relatively successful seasons for area teams that nonetheless failed to yield a championship. Last month, the town’s iconic hockey franchise, the Red Wings, who, like the Pistons, had enjoyed their conference’s best regular season record, were also eliminated in the conference championship round of the NHL Playoffs.
Last fall, the long suffering Detroit Tigers won the American League pennant in Major League Baseball, only to come up short against the underdog Saint Louis Cardinals in the World Series.
The then #2 ranked University of Michigan Wolverines football team had enjoyed an undefeated season prior to last fall’s showdown with the top ranked Ohio State Buckeyes in what many were characterizing as the most “hyped” college football game of all time.
While ESPN fans had named the Ohio State - Michigan football rivalry as the greatest sports rivalry of the last century, the two had never met for their traditional Big Ten Conference season finale while respectively holding the #1 and #2 ranking in the national polls prior to last season.
Michigan lost the game in Columbus by a field goal; the Buckeye win secured a position for Ohio State in last year’s college football national championship game.
Some area sports fans can find a degree of solace with the NCAA Hockey Championship won by the Michigan State Spartans earlier this year; the main Michigan State Campus is located in Lansing, toward the center of the state.
The act of throwing muskrat both enjoins and parodies three traditions unique to Detroiters; Red Wings fans for decades have thrown octopi onto the rink after a Red Wing NHL Playoff victory; with each tentacle of the octopus symbolically representing one of each of the eight playoff victories which were required to win the Stanley Cup Championship in the halcyon era of that franchise.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit has for generations allowed a special dispensation for the consumption of muskrat during Lenten days of abstinence.
In the fall of 2003, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick declared ‘Tiger Day’ after the Tigers had escaped setting a Major League Baseball record for losses that season (see Detroit Tigers Dodge Loss Record; Ticker Tape Parade Planned, The Disassociated Press, September 29, 2003), and called for Detroiters to throw trash up into the air; a tradition that was repeated in the fall of 2005; when Detroiters celebrated narrowly escaping the indignity of being named by the FBI as living in the ‘Most Dangerous City in the Nation;’ an accomplishment the city had achieved for the second year in a row at that time (see Detroit Dodges Bullet in Crime Survey; Mayor Calls for Celebration, The Disassociated Press, November 25, 2005).
As for the Detroit Lions, the city’s football franchise, which can claim only a single post season victory in over fifty years, Grimlot states, “I have a special muskrat to throw for them – it has a white stripe down its back.”
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